Albert de Zutter/Key photo Sister Christine Vladimiroff

Sister Christine Vladimiroff, who is also prioress of her Benedictine community in Erie, Pa., was in Rome for the Worldwide Congress of Men and Women Religious, bringing together some 800 leaders of the religious orders from around the world. The theme of the congress is "Envisioning and Articulating the Future."

In a Nov. 22 interview, Sister Vladimiroff said religious orders are exercising creativity in founding new ministries, especially with the poor in inner cities. She also said that religious communities are pooling their resources and collaborating with one another and with the diocesan church more than ever before.

An example of collaboration in creating new ministries is the founding of a new school by three congregations of women religious in Baltimore.

Another example is an organization founded by the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of St. Joseph and Benedictine Sisters to help the homeless rent an apartment, establish credit and eventually become home owners.

In Erie, Pa., three religious orders and the diocese, with the collaboration of Bishop Donald Trautman, have established Catholic Rural Ministries, which now has two sisters working in rural areas.

"Our founders came over without knowing the language or the culture, and built great institutions," Sister Vladimiroff said. "We (her order of Benedictines) came in 1856 from Bavaria, young German women founding monasteries and schools and living in terrible poverty. We are called to equal that greatness in our time."

She said that in addition to the "areas of energy and vision" that she sees among religious orders today, there are areas of struggle and concern. Among those is the decline in numbers of religious and the aging of religious communities.

But, she said, it is not only the religious communities, but the entire population in the U.S. that is aging.

Another area of struggle is "to live a purposeful, meaningful and Gospel-oriented life, and not be absorbed with survival and maintenance," she said.

"We don't want our focus to be the retirement fund and worrying if we will be cared for," she said. "It should be 'what would our founders want us to do at this time?' If it is a good work, God will provide. If not, something will grow in our place."

Sister Vladimiroff called religious life "a gift to the church." "It takes a piece of the Gospel and lives it in a focused way - a charism." She said she wanted people to know that "we are alive and well and doing great things."

"People don't see the big institutions any more and they think we are dying. But we have people coming in all the time. We are passing a way of life to another generation," she said.

She said her own congregation always has two to four people in some stage of formation to join the order.

"They are generous people who have many options, more than I had in 1957 at the age of 17," she said. "They have careers, houses, cars that they are leaving behind. It's a much bigger leap for them. That kind of generosity will be a blessing to the church."

New ministries are needed to respond to conditions in the world today, Sister Vladimiroff said. In the U.S., globalization and the mobility of the population are creating a pluralistic environment.

In the meantime, free trade and "our neo-liberal economy" are creating poverty for some and wealth for others.

"We have structures that create great poverty - and wealth for a few," she said. "Do we have anything to say from the Gospel to the world about that?"

When society in the time of St. Francis of Assisi was characterized by the wealthy taking advantage of the poor, Francis began living with the poor to demonstrate their dignity, she said.

"During the Reformation, the Dominicans were founded to preach and to help defend the faith. In this third millennium, maybe we have to re-found our institutions."

In contrast to the high individualism of our society, the Benedictine charism is hospitality, "accepting the stranger."

"We think we should be autonomous, independent and self-sufficient," she said. "But the Benedictines demonstrate interdependence and care for each other - a counter-cultural and Gospel witness. The most powerful way to preach such care and interdependence is to live it.

"We're over 1,500 years old. We need to call ourselves to personal and communal transformation so we can live in community in peace, so as to welcome strangers into a safe environment with fellow seekers."

She said her own community welcomes about 1,000 people a year looking for meaning and spiritual reinforcement. "They come where they can see people who are seeking God and where they can draw strength and inspiration. That's what people tell us happens to them."

In addition to direct ministries to people, religious communities must "raise our voices in the halls of power," she said. "If anything, religious communities should be a voice and a sign of hope," she said.

The institutional church is a human construct, she said, "fallible, provisional and in need of constant renewal."

"The structures and policies are always behind where the spirit is moving us," she said.

"We need a church that gathers us in meaningful ways to experience God in our midst, and a mission to bring about God's reign. There's a dynamic about following Jesus, and it's not about our comfort.

"We don't gather for liturgy to feel good about ourselves, but to find what it means to belong to the church and to care about others. And when we go forth, that's when we live what it means to be a follower of Jesus - to express care, forgiveness and concern."

Regarding the problems of the world, Sister Vladimiroff said, "You can be bitter or keep stoking the hope so that others can carry on and bring about what you're not going to see. That's generativity. That's what good parents and grandparents do."

END